While searching through Wikipedia for definitions of social media terms, I came across a long list of blog related words. While even the term blog (web + log) is far from inspiring, the wealth of ridiculousness within the word warping ‘blogosphere’ is overwhelming. For your enjoyment/disgust/confusion, here are the dumbest blog terms (blerms) ever made. Seriously, try saying any of these without cringing or bursting out in laughter.

Note: use the following terms with caution since we think someone on Wikipedia was just messing around when they added them. Still, several of these blog words (blords) may wind up on a blog near you, so knowing these definitions will not only make you appear more knowledgeable, you could potentially win some trivia with them one day! Also, if you happen to see any of these terms used on our blog, let us know and we’ll promptly shoot ourselves in the foot.

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At Apollo Media, we manage a wide variety of blogs and find ourselves constantly researching, fully immersing ourselves in the rapidly evolving world of Web 2.0. Because we are always taking on new tasks and developing different types of content, we’ve had to sort out the different types of blogs to better assess the function and purpose of each.

If you’ve ever been confused about blogs, here are 3 blog categories and their brief definitions:

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Basically, a blog carnival is a special event held on a blog. But this definition…lacks. Let’s take a moment to define the term properly and analyze just how it can really help your blog gain readership and authority within your niche.

Step Right Up!

A blog carnival is a pretty self-explanatory term in itself. Just like a real carnival, blog carnivals travel to different sites offering a variety of attractions, generally related to a single theme or topic. Blog carnivals are collaborative events that function in a similar way to magazines – they pull together a team of like-minded writers to focus on particular subject on a regular schedule.

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Web 2.0 is a term which refers to the evolution, i.e. the second generation or version, of the Internet. It is used to describe the emergence of software programs and web-based activities that allow for and highlight the connectivity aspect of the Internet.

Web 2.0 focuses on web-based communities, networks and hosting services which are dependant on open-source, user-generated content and software programs. Web 2.0 relies on user collaboration, sharing and independent, as well as co-dependent, creation.

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Social media optimization (SMO) is practically synonymous with social media marketing (SMM). Actually, the two terms are so new to the search marketing industry that there’s been debate whether or not there is a difference; and if it would cause more confusion by refining their meanings into two separate definitions.

Cameron Othuis of Pronet Advertising offers one way to differentiate SMO and SMM by focusing on whether or not something new is created in the process. He suggests that optimization is simply the process of making onsite changes to a website or blog that facilitate social media users to fully enjoy, participate and pass the site onto their social media networks, such as providing Digg and Facebook icons to click on.

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Social Media Marketing (SMM) (a.k.a. social media marketing, viral or buzz marketing, community marketing and a few others) is an internet marketing term referring to the promotion of a brand, company, website or blog through social networking sites (e.g. LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, etc.) and social web applications (e.g. Digg, Stumbleupon and Twitter, etc.). Smart SMM tactics involve highly evolved content generation that both promotes and encourages user-generated feedback, discussion and viral action (a.k.a. web word-of-mouth).

SMM is a revolutionary marketing practice in that it relies on the contribution of consumers in the shaping of promotions, rather than pushing hard-sell techniques. Social media has allowed consumers to be active participants of a brand’s marketing message - with or without the brand’s blessing. It is a movement from the traditional marketing approach of `communication’ to one that revolves around the unpredictable but very influential `conversation’.

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Happy Valentine’s Day, Readers! In honour of this day for love, the Apollo Media team thought it would be great to write an article that defines this aptly named SEO term and explain why you shouldn’t wait for Valentine’s to send out your link love.

Link Love is the act of contextually linking to other websites or blogs. You see that hyperlink there? That’s an example of link love. Click on it and it will bring you to Blogossary, the blogophere’s dictionary blog and its definition of “Link Love”.

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Search engine advertising (SEA) is one section of search engine marketing (SEM), an internet marketing strategy using search engines as a website promotion tool. SEA involves strategic placement of online advertisements on web pages and the use of keywords.

Paid placement or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is the most popular advertising model that search engines, advertising networks and websites/bloggers offer to businesses to advertise their products and services. They are called “sponsored ads” and can appear at the top and sides of search engine results or where webmasters/bloggers decide to publish the ads on their site. Advertisers only pay when users click on the ad (which then brings them to the advertisers’ website).

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Search engine marketing (SEM) refers to the general internet marketing practice of promoting web content by increasing its visibility on search engines, like Google. Since all search engines have the common goal to provide the most relevant search results for their users, SEM is driven by relevancy for the end user.

Search engine marketing methods involve the use of keywords and the pursuit to land on the first few pages of the search engine results pages (SERPs). Statistics show that most web users click on the highest ranking websites (source: SEOmoz) and go no further than the third page of results.

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Organic SEO or natural search engine optimization is one method in achieving optimization. To optimize your site means to help the people most likely to benefit from the website (your target audience) to discover your website through search engines by ranking highly with (and therefore appearing earlier in the pages of search results of) major search engines, like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.

Search engines have one main goal: to present their users with the most relevant and useful information. They do this by identifying key characteristics of relevant websites and creating algorithms for their indexing programs around these criteria.

It is called organic or natural SEO because a website that fits the search engine’s relevancy criteria should also be (in theory) valuable to the web user. If a website is a hit with the user, then it should naturally fall within the search engine’s criteria and appear higher in ranking. In other words, there is no exchange of money for placement in the results pages when using organic SEO.

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